1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer and communication networks, and more specifically, to wireless carriers, wireless telecommunications, mobile phone software developers, information content delivery services and providers, multimedia messaging service (MMS), and IETF-specification compliant interfaces in general.
2. Background of Related Art
Standards for wireless multimedia messaging exist, e.g., WAP-Based MMS (www.openmobilealliance.org) and Internet Email-Based MMS (SMTP/IMAP4/POP3). Existing standards for wireless Multimedia Messaging rely on the presence of a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Gateway and the use of WAP encapsulation techniques in order to transfer multimedia messages between origin servers and mobile stations. The problem this creates is twofold: 1) Not all wireless service providers make use of WAP Gateways in their mobile networks and 2) Many service providers who have offered WAP-based services in the past have no desire to base their forward-looking, next generation services on WAP technologies which have proven sub-standard in the past. The creation of a wireless multimedia messaging framework that relies entirely on specifications endorsed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body in charge of the standardization of the public Internet, would allow wireless service providers to field MMS services that are fully Internet-standard compliant and hence WAP free. The IETF specification is explicitly incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
Conventional systems do not provide an IETF-compliant (non-WAP) interface between mobile MMS User Agents and Multimedia Messaging Service Center servers. The state-of-the-art in this arena at present involves the use of WAP MMS specifications created by the WAP Forum to implement a non-homogeneous interface from MMSC to WAP Gateway, and then from WAP Gateway to WAP MMS User Agent. The WAP Gateway acts as a protocol converter between the HTTP interface to the MMSC (which acts as an Origin Server) and the WSP interface to the WAP MMS User Agent (which is WAP-browser based). Other Wireless Telecommunication software vendors have proposed non-WAP solutions for this interface in the past, but they have relied on Internet email protocols (SMTP, POP3, IMAP4) for multimedia message transport.
Moreover, conventional systems fail to provide an IETF-compliant (non-WAP) interface between mobile MMS User Agents and Multimedia Messaging Service Center servers. The current state-of-the-art technology, WAP-based MMS, has the following disadvantages: 1) WAP is a partially proprietary protocol and is not a truly ‘global’ standard, 2) Many wireless Service Providers and their subscribers have been very disillusioned with WAP-based applications in the past, focusing on WAP's poor performance and unimpressive features, 3) WAP MMS requires not only the use of a WAP Gateway installed in the Service Provider's network, but the WAP Gateway must be of the latest protocol version. Given worldwide economic conditions, many Service Providers do not wish to use their resources upgrading systems which have had little success in the past. 4) WAP solutions use message-traffic intensive protocols and couples them with additional WAP-specific overhead producing an application that uses significant bandwidth.
Some proposals in the wireless world promote the use of other non-WAP solutions for MMS. Some of these rely on Internet email protocols (SMTP, POP3, IMAP4). However, these protocols are inherently poor performers in wireless due to the “chatty”, traffic-intensive nature of email transport.